The aim of this course is to familiarise the participants
with long read (also called “third generation”) sequencing technologies,
their applications and the bioinformatics tools used to assemble this
kind of data. Multiple sequencing platforms, including Pacific
Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore MinION, are now available to generate
reads that are several kilobases-long. It is also possible to assemble
Illumina reads to generate in-silico long reads. These improvements have
greatly facilitated the assembly of genomes but some other applications
are emerging, for example, for haplotype phasing, or for the study of
alternative splicing using RNA-seq.

This course will be composed of an introduction to the
techniques and data analysis methods, a minisymposium and a hands-on
session. The minisymposium will consist of short presentations by SIB
researchers on the applications of these technologies. It will be
followed by a panel discussion between speakers and the audience,
letting the opportunity to debate on the advantages and pitfalls of
these technologies for research projects. The hands-on session will
consist of computer exercises that will enable the participants to
familiarize with real datasets from different technologies and the
bioinformatics tools to assemble genomes.